Storyline & Characters
There are altogether 7 characters in our story. In the character development process, we decided to dress the characters up in fabrics instead of painting them in colours. This way, we can also introduce the children more about each individual culture. For instance, the Chinese character DaWei wears a cheongsam made of blue silk with chinese motifs embroided on it. We also worked on a more sketchy feeling for the style of our book instead of going for bold outlines. It makes the characters more visually appealing and looks less flat.

Working Process
We split up our work in several processes. Sketching, tracing into CG, colouring of foreground, colouring or background and character design.

Final Prototype
And so after 3 weeks or arduous meetings and hard work, the book is finally completed (:

The infographic I created shows various forms of food transportation leaving their tracks around the world, and how the food they transport eventually ends up on your dinner plate. The yellow/orange/red background depicts how these forms of transportation contribute to global warming with the emission of GHG. On the bottom of the picture I included information about what food miles is for the reader to understand. On the left, I added in different solutions to combat this global issue – beginning with individual, to group, then to international efforts.

Critique
The suggestions that my peers gave during tutorial session include
- Transportation icons should be clearer since they are the main causes of this global climate change
- Instead of placing transportation on the surface of the earth, they could follow the trails and arrows to give a clearer picture of its effects
- Colour saturation appears a little off

Final Infographic

Making some improvements to the previous work, I placed the transportation on the trails itself so it seems as though they are travelling around the globe extensively. In addition, I also coloured the transportation black and included emissions to bring across the point more clearly.

I decided on the Youth Film Festival, where it encourages support for original films made my talented young filmmakers, and also provide an arena for the youths to express their thoughts and vision of the world. Some websites that I googled while doing research are pretty inspiring – Reel Youth & Graphic Fetish (love the designs here). Since one of the learning objectives of this assignment is to explore various usage of colour combination to express the dynamism of youth, I wanted the final design to include attractive vibrant colours that exude the creativity of youths.

Thumbnails

Critique
Most commented that they prefer the black/white, yellow/red/green and red/black/white colour schemes. The monotone colours of the black/white scheme gives a classic and artsy feel to the film festival. In contrast, the other 2 schemes consists of more vibrant and warm colours that brings out creativity and youthfulness.

Final artwork

I chose the red/black/white colour theme as the final piece because I feel that it encompasses the expressions of both the other two. Red is a bright and loud colour that can be associated with youthfulness and the tinge of black and grays add on to the artistic feel of the film festival. For the back design, I kept it in simple grayscale with background details so as to make it look intricate yet not too compressed with details.

Right before this assignment, I was working on a few postcard designs for my hall’s Youth Expedition Project team. These were the three final designs I submitted.

Some shameless advertising for the YEP team, we’ll be selling these postcards and other goodies during the Kent Rigde Hall bazaar @ CentralForum on 3,4,5 March to raise funds for our trip. Do your part for charity!

  (L) Silence – the emptiness and silence in this picture is emphasized by the large expanse of space and the focus on the tiny dot at a corner instead of the center. (R) Clutter – a concentration of objects of various sizes to give it a more disorderly look.

So my storyline for this assignment is basically monday blues O: Sleepy boy is reluctant to wake up and start the day, rather laze in bed. Going through a series of morning routines still half asleep. Finally gets himself ready for school to realise that he has forgotten to change out of his boxers due to his blurness. Haha a typical morning syndrome for many people I guess (of course the comical ending is just an exaggeration!) I started out drawing the storyboard to have an idea of how I wanted the shots to look like.

Critique
This was the piece that I brought to the critique session on Wednesday. A few comments mentioned were:

Final Prototype

I changed the plot of the story slightly for the final artwork. Instead of being overly sleepy, the guy ends up forgetting his pants in the rush of the moment from oversleeping. I feel that this could bring out a greater impact for the storyline.

Time for some photo-taking! Well basically Jack kind of ended up camwhoring with her camera phone after the lecture ended haha. It was pretty fun exploring all the different camera angles and coming up with all sorts of funny poses.

L&R: Eye level, medium close up shots.

 
L&Center: Low camera angle. Makes the subject appear superior and powerful heh heh.
R: High camera angle. Makes the subject look small, weak or vulnerable. School work is stressing us out mannnn :S

And just a random shot of the 3 lecture mates – Jacklyn Terence and me! I don’t remember what’s up with our facial expressions though haha!

Some other photographs that I’ve taken previously that also make use of such camera angles and also exploring on the use of the rule of thirds.
 
R: The sunset at Tioman Island is one of the most beautiful sights I’ve seen. In the photo about 3/4 or more of the space is taken up by the sky and the land forms only a small portion at the bottom, according to the rules of third, such that the horizon doesn’t cut the picture into half.
L: This photo was taken from the back of the guide on a riverboat ride. I like how the photo is divided into two vertical halves and the composition of the landscape and subject. I guess its kind of one example of how the picture composition doesn’t always have to comply with the rule of thirds and still work. Kind of peaceful and calming looking at this photo (:

 
L: An extreme close up shot of a flower. Emphasizes on the details such as the droplets of water from the previous rainfall.
R: Eye level shot with the subject focused on the left instead of being centralised.

For the second assignment we are supposed to produce an abstraction in terms of simplifying the object through reduction of multiple visual factors. I wanted to focus on architecture as directional signs and chose to work on the abstraction of Chijmes – it’s such a beautiful building! and I don’t really see signs for this building around the City Hall area. From the actual picture of the front view of the Chijmes (left), I reduced the architecture in 6 steps. While working on simplifying the image, I retained the more prominent features and shapes in the building, namely the steeple and the arc windows, to make the final representative image familiar and easily recognizable. Below is the abstraction process that I brought to the tutorial for critique.

Stumbled across some problems with the assignment along the way. Firstly, I felt that the Chijmes cathedral can be easily mistaken as St Andrew’s Cathedral in City Hall (well most cathedrals have roughly the same kind of structure :S). My classmates also pointed out during tutorial that Image 6 (without the additional sides of the building) makes it look just like any other random castle. I guess the main challenge for my work is really to come up with an obvious, distinct representative image that would not be easily confused with other landmarks.

Solution – some suggested that I could incorporated themes related to Chijmes into the abstraction. For instance, our tutor mentioned that one significant aspect of Chijmes is its Gate of Hope (left). Chijmes was originally a CHIJ girls’ convent school up till the 1980s. In the past, abandoned babies are sometimes left at the doorstep and nuns residing in the convent would take in these infants, thus the given name Gate of Hope (more information here). In addition, Chijmes is also well known for its relaxing ambience and dining. My peers suggested adding images such as fork/knife on to the abstracted image of the building as Chijmes is by far the only entertainment spot in Singapore with a cathedral situated in the location. This makes the representative image more prominent and less confusing.

Working Process
I refined the abstraction based on the inclusion of the Gate of Hope, changing the proportion of the cathedral and the door such that the Gate of Hope is the main focus in the composition. The black/white contrast also helps to make the door stand out more because of the difference in colour between the door and cathedral tower. I chose the fourth picture as the final prototype over the fifth because the details of the Gate of Hope makes it more specific to the audience.

Some examples of how the final pictogram can be used for directional signs.

Prior to our 2nd assignment on creating a pictogram, we were supposed to come up with an iconic and indexical image (not arbituary but with relation to) of an object. Jacklyn and me worked on a couple of ideas and settled on the camera. The iconic representation is the device itself and the indexical sign would be photographs (:

Insights from the second round of critique session include the following comments:

• Too flat. Could work on some shadowing/removing of outlines to give it a 3D look
• Good use of soccer field lines on the green grass patch so it would not look so empty
• Could use stronger/brighter colours for the objects
• Background will be better with a brighter blue-white gradient. Can add clouds or some sort to fill up the spaces
• Some asked why the use of a semi-circle surface. Well firstly, composition wise this arrangement would prevent a huge chunk of empty space left on the top of the A5 piece as compared to if I used a flat surface. Secondly, I had not enough space to draw out everything lol. & thirdly, there’s this saying like “The ball is round”, meaning things can go either way. I guess it relates to soccer and to life itself too? There’s no one and only outcome to anything haha (:
• One said the text could be removed, some felt it was okay to add in the text.

Final Prototype

For our first NM2208 assignment, we were instructed to use visual forms that represent us to design our name. The first step of the design process requires us to list down the things we like or dislike. I came up with a few words and brainstormed on these themes, sketching out a couple of thumbnails. Tried different attempts in the way I drew my name, either Tammy or in the short form Tam. Realized that the letters M and Y are quite tricky to come up with something :S

From the thumbnail drawings, I selected 4 to further develop into preliminary sketches – 1 ‘soccer’ themed, 1 ‘sushi’ themed, and 2 ‘travelling’ themed. We had a critique session during our first tutorial and I would say the feedback were really helpful in helping me decide which piece to work on and improve.

Most mentioned that they liked the soccer theme best out of the four because it is straightforward and tells a lot about my character – sporty, energetic, goal oriented (referring to the centralized goal post, which I never exactly thought about beforehand haha).

I drew the sushi theme because it combines two of my interests – Japanese culture & food. Thought it may look aesthetically pleasing when the sushi is painted in bright colours but the class group commented that it may seem too common a design to work on.

My last two pieces were on the travelling theme. The one on the left speaks clearly about tourism travelling because of all the landmarks used to portray my name. On the other hand, the right one depicts travelling more as a form of freedom, free to head to any destination. The class thought that the letters integrated to the runway was interesting but also commented that it may be hard to decipher what the picture tells about me.